This year, the GCSE cohort along with me (Lisa Foster), Joel Rickard and Chris Young experienced a two day residential visit to London. After dropping our luggage at the Meininger Hotel we went straight to the Science Museum where students visited the “Who am I” and the “Engineer your Future” exhibitions. Our next stop was the Fire and Stone restaurant where we had pizza and ice-cream for our pre-theatre meal. In the evening we thoroughly enjoyed our evening at The Gielgud Theatre where we watched a fabulous performance of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night time. We were gripped by the futuristic technology of the set and the scene involving the tube station sent shivers up my spine. I was already apprehensive about taking 17 students on the tube and this scene added to my concerns! However, all was well and we arrived back at our hotel safely but exhausted.

On Wednesday we had an early start as we had to pack in a visit to The Tate Modern, a tour of St. Paul’s Cathedral and a river cruise on the Thames before being collected by coach from Greenwich Maritime Museum. The tour guide at St. Paul’s was excellent, her patience and good humour knew no ends. We negotiated our way around the capital by tube and seemed to walk miles in a day. The students were extremely well behaved and made all the planning that went into the visit thoroughly worthwhile.